Spellbound

Last night I watched the 1944 Hitchcock movie “Spellbound”. Frankly it was a bit disappointing. I’m a big Hitchcock fan, and I hadn’t seen anything with Ingrid Bergman in before but knew she had a great reputation. So I was pretty hopeful that this would be well worth watching. The movie was certainly entertaining to the degree that any formulaic mystery/romance is. And it was pretty clear early on why Bergman was such a big star. But I’m afraid the story was pretty hopeless. I found the instantaneous romance between Bergman and Peck (complete with violins, evidentally designed to make sure we didn’t miss it) just way too contrived, and I’m afraid the whole psychoanalysis thing was completely impossible to swallow. The best thing about the movie to be honest was the supporting role of Michael Checkov as Bergman’s mentor. He was really pretty funny and won an Oscar nomination for the role. Actually the movie as a whole took 6 nominations, including best picture and director. But I’m afraid I couldn’t rate it as highly as that result suggests.